Archive for August 9, 2010

This is my first time doing book review. Hopefully, you all enjoy it :)

Pastor Cho is (or was) the Senior Pastor of Yoido Full Gospel Church, the largest church in the world with membership of about ~750000 members. He is also the founder of Church Growth International. He has authored many other books such as Successful Home Cell Groups, Suffering… Why Me?, Unleashing the Power of Faith, and many others. He loves God and loves to pray.

Preface

Here Pastor Cho told of his background. When he was young, he was struck with certain disease. There was nothing the doctor could do except predicting his death. However, he then accepted Lord Jesus and received the miracle of healing.

(PS: Yes, miracle is still available for us today)

Summary

This book consists of six chapters. Pastor Cho addressed specifically on the term “The Fourth Dimension” in Chapter 2. In short, Fourth Dimension refers to visions and dreams. This is because visions and dreams are not confined in three dimensions world (length, width and height). By reading the Bible, we can dream bigger and envision larger. As we bring these specific and clear-cut vision and dream in fervent prayer, the Holy Spirit will incubate them (Chapter 1) and create a miracle out of them.

Other than the word of prayer, Pastor Cho also emphasizes the importance of confessing the word God has given; in other words, to command circumstance to change according to the word from God (Chapter 3). However, we need to be sure that this is really the word from God or rhema, not just logos (Chapter 4). While logos is for everyone, rhema is only for specific people in specific situation. In order for logos to change into rhema, we need to wait on the Holy Spirit. This also implies we need to understand the Bible from Genesis to Revelation before the Holy Spirit can speak to us specifically through rhema.

When we move in the fourth dimension, we may find ourselves in a very impossible situation. However, Pastor Cho urged us to think in terms of miracles (Chapter 5). He compared two disciples Philip and Andrew when it came to feeding the multitudes. Philip thought of the impossibility, but Andrew thought of a possibility. In the last chapter, Pastor Cho gave God’s address: our heart. Hence, we need to keep our heart pure. He explained several types of sin which commonly dwell in our heart.

In all the chapters, Pastor Cho pointed out the concept of fourth dimension in the life of Bible characters and gave a lot of real life examples from his ministry.

My Personal Opinion

I strongly recommend you to read this book. I’ve experienced such a revolution in my prayer life: my prayer is no longer just repetition of the same words or just spelling out words in the air. I now pray with clear focus and I can feel the presence of God whom I am praying to. In terms of understanding of God’s word, I am now more motivated to read the Bible too as the Holy Spirit can turn any logos I read into a rhema.

Answering Objections

As usual, there are some people out there who criticize Pastor Cho’s teaching. I browsed through the internet and found many of them (and I wanted to blast those writers with Senpo: Cho Odama Rasen Darengan). Since I have no time to address everything, I will just focus on one thing:

Seriously, “incubation/imagination/visualization” has nothing to do with any particular religion. Hence, there is nothing wrong with adding “incubation/imagination/ visualization” in our prayer. According to a professor in my school who is an atheist, he “dreamed” of his projects whenever he ate, drank, bathed or even slept when he was doing his PhD.

Here the culture says people work 5 days per week. However, I do not subscribe to this culture. I prefer working 6 days in a week. It is written, “Six days you shall labor and do all your work., but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD your God.” (Exodus 20:9-10). Since my Sabbath is on Saturday (the day I can play, have great fellowship and meet with God), I should work on Sunday and today even if it is a public holiday :P

What’s the purpose of me working hard? In short, it is for future family.

(Quoting the Fourth Hokage/Minato, “Dying to make a better life for his son… That’s the stuffs you let the father handle.”)